'
'Feared!' replied the child, sitting down beside him. 'Is it not
a good place?'
'Yes, yes,' said the schoolmaster. 'But you must be gay
sometimes--nay, don't shake your head and smile so sadly.'
'Not sadly, if you knew my heart. Do not look at me as if you
thought me sorrowful. There is not a happier creature on earth,
than I am now.'
Full of grateful tenderness, the child took his hand, and folded it
between her own. 'It's God's will!' she said, when they had been
silent for some time.
'What?'
'All this,' she rejoined; 'all this about us. But which of us is
sad now? You see that I am smiling.'
'And so am I,' said the schoolmaster; 'smiling to think how often
we shall laugh in this same place. Were you not talking yonder?'
'Yes,'the child rejoined.
'Of something that has made you sorrowful?'
There was a long pause.
'What was it?' said the schoolmaster, tenderly. 'Come. Tell me
what it was.'
'I rather grieve--I do rather grieve to think,' said the child,
bursting into tears, 'that those who die about us, are so soon
forgotten.'
'And do you think,' said the schoolmaster, marking the glance she
had thrown around, 'that an unvisited grave, a withered tree, a
faded flower or two, are tokens of forgetfulness or cold neglect?
Do you think there are no deeds, far away from here, in which these
dead may be best remembered? Nell, Nell, there may be people busy
in the world, at this instant, in whose good actions and good
thoughts these very graves--neglected as they look to us--are the
chief instruments.
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